Paper 47: The Twitter Files
Why Twitter Matters For You In Web3
GM - this is the BCheque Papers, edition #47.
I write about NFTs/crypto, and trying to make it independently in web3.
This week we’ve got
This Week In Crypto - Subpoena incoming for Sam...
This Week In NFT World - RTFKT Fumble, CryptoPunk dies, Tim Ferriss launch
Creator Corner - Twitter skeletons but bright future
AI of the Week
For partnership or sponsorship enquires, please DM me on Twitter.
Have a great day,
B
This Week In Crypto
SBF bombs in more media - SBF, former CEO of bankrupt crypto-exchange FTX, continued his media tour this week and struggled in interviews with more sophisticated interviewers. I consider us verging on “SBF Porn” now, so I don’t want to share too many more of these, but this is pretty hilarious/ridiculous/tragic.
FTX/Alameda investments revealed - It is alleged that many of FTX/Alameda investments were funded by customer money. Those investments have been published. People are speculating on Twitter that Modulo Capital may be an SBF shell company ($400M went there) because no-one knows what it is…
Incoming subpoena for SBF - After some weak wording from US authorities out of the gate, they now appear to be playing *slightly* harder ball with SBF. He will need to testify next week on the 13th at a hearing. Will cover the details next week…
100ETH funding for crypto-security expert - The Nouns, an online avatar community who attempt to bootstrap identity, community, governance, and have a treasury which can be used by the community, voted in favour of supporting ZachXBT - the famous crypto-security expert. Think of Zach as Batman in crypto/nft world - striking terror into those who receive a DM from him regarding nefarious on-chain behaviour. Zach’s work is dangerous and heroic, and it’s amazing to see funding like this approved.
Constitution DAO is back to buy the American Constitution - Last November this DAO raised $40m to buy the US constitution at a Sotheby’s auction, but was outbid by another wealthy bidder. Now the only other original printing of the constitution is up for sale and the DAO wants a second bite at the cherry. This time they plan to raise a certain amount privately, so other potential buyers do not know their max. bid. (There was also a coin attached which pumped for some reason, so will be fun to watch again!)
2. This Week In NFT World
RTFKT disastrous communications rocks fanbase - Prominent and large holders like @graildoteth and @OGDfarmer put their whole collections up for sale - with the main argument being that communication from RTFKT was horrific.
RTFKT let the MNLTH NFT sell for thousands each month, earning secondary royalties, whilst knowing that its utility was just a price reduction of an IRL shoe (which couldn’t even be shipped to outside of the US!). A huge L for Nike/RTFKT. I wrote in past here on how they had been doing so well.
Here is my full summary including the thinking of LambolandNFT and RiddlerNFT.
Cryptopunk fractionalised on SOL - A really cool Cryptopunk was sent to Solana and fractionalised to be sold in 1000 tokens. Easy burned his token (lol) so in a sense this Cryptopunk can never “fully” exist anymore!
Tim Ferriss releases Cockpunch, NFT project - Tim raised around $2m for charity with this launch and will likely make 7 figures from royalties. It is an “emergent long fiction project” in a fictional realm - to be produced via podcast.
Creator Corner
This week some real skeletons came out of the closet for Twitter. But that should not cloud the brightness of its future for creators.
A new investigation revealed that teams of Twitter employees built blacklists, prevented disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limited the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.
The thread above gives some concrete examples of particular accounts being blacklisted in some way.
It alleges that there was a secret group including Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others, where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. And these decisions had no oversight.
This had always been a suspicion of many big accounts - who felt their reach was getting played with to some degree - but it is certainly worrying for any independent creator.
Put the politics aside for a moment.
If the powers allow the company to do this today whilst you support the suppression, the powers will continue tomorrow whether you support it or not.
Any form of suppression should really be reserved for the most serious cases and/or illegality.
This will always be a tough line to draw, but we must err on this side of caution IF - and it seems to be the case - power which accrues to entities for this purpose leads to some sort of opaque tyranny.
This is in the interest of all of us, because we rely too heavily on this platform for it to be taken away from us one day if we say the “wrong” thing once (or even a few times.)
This is even more crucial for us because Twitter appears to be in the process of shifting its strategy to go more into crypto.
It has been noted many times what a great job YouTube does of incentivising creators by having proper monetisation potential.
To date Twitter has done very poorly with respect to creator monetisation.
As NFT God points out, crypto and NFTs are coming to Twitter, probably via some sort of crypto wallet, and potentially with its own native digital currency.
Early adopters on all platforms - YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, - all have a huge advantage when it comes to reach.
I believe that creating content on Twitter now with tweets, longer threads, and short form video would be an excellent investment in yourself to build a solid foundation for the future (crypto) creator economy on Twitter.
AI of the Week
I said I’d play around with ChatGPT which I wrote about last week - the AI which can answer all of your questions and requests. Here are some wild examples from others this week.
Have a great day,
B
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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the NFTs mentioned in these newsletters.